McDonald’s plans $3.9 billion in 2026 restaurant expansion spending

McDonald’s is setting up another year of heavy buildout, and for crews and managers that usually means the work starts long before a new restaurant opens its doors. The company said 2026 capital spending will land between $3.7 billion and $3.9 billion, with most of that money aimed at new restaurant expansion across the U.S. and International Operated Markets. It expects to open about 2,600 restaurants in 2026, including roughly 750 in the U.S. and International Operated Markets, a pace that will ripple through hiring, onboarding, equipment installs and pre-opening training.

That expansion is not happening in a vacuum. McDonald’s said it opened nearly 2,300 restaurants in 2025 and is still moving toward its goal of 50,000 restaurants by the end of 2027. The company’s longer-term growth plan calls for expansion of about 4% to 5% a year, with a run rate of roughly 1,000 gross restaurant openings across the U.S. and International Operated Markets in 2027. For franchisees, that kind of pipeline tends to mean more site development work and more pressure to staff up quickly without letting service or standards slip.

For restaurant leaders, the practical strain is familiar. New-unit openings pull in field support, maintenance crews, suppliers and training teams, while nearby stores often absorb the extra load when managers, trainers and crew leaders are borrowed for opening support. In a business where turnover is high and labor costs remain a live issue, each new store can become a scheduling problem as much as a growth story. That is especially true in a system where 95% of U.S. restaurants are locally owned and operated, so a lot of the day-to-day execution risk sits with franchise operators rather than corporate headquarters.

McDonald’s has been pairing that physical expansion with more digital and operational standardization. Its growth strategy also points to Google Cloud technology, beginning in 2024, as a way to improve operations and the customer and crew experience. The company has said one in eight Americans has worked at a McDonald’s restaurant, and that its U.S. system supports more than 1 million jobs, which gives the 2026 opening plan a broader labor-market meaning than a simple unit count. McDonald’s also said it provided more than $25.8 million in tuition assistance to restaurant employees across the U.S. through Archways to Opportunity in 2024, a reminder that the company’s expansion plans shape not just store counts, but the training ladders and promotion paths inside the system.